On the Case Chapters 2-3. I like this book!

I really enjoyed today’s reading of On the Case chapters two and three. As others have said on the blog, it’s nice to move on to something a bit different from our first book of the semester. Chapter two deals with “Casing the Joint,” or developing initial impressions of a site. I found this chapter interesting, because it helped me see how I might start work on our project for this course. I’ve been a bit nervous regarding the proper way to start such a project, and I was pleasantly surprised when chapter two opened with some simple but effective ways of beginning work. Getting things like maps and routines in order seems like an excellent way to begin a project; these are simple steps that are relatively easy to take, yet can still yield some insightful material. If we approach our projects with the correct mentality, we should be able to learn a lot from these relatively simple preliminary measures. As shown in the chapter, however, we need to view things from the perspective of a researcher in order to best develop our initial impressions.

One such example of what to do (or what not to do) is the portion of the chapter in which the researcher contrasted her views of the inner city classroom with the college student observers. The observer tended to take her preconceptions about what the class would be like and then view the class from a jaded perspective (for example, her assertion that no reading was taking place in the classroom). On the other hand, the researcher took a wider view and found that quite a lot of reading was taking place, but it was done within the class schedule. Taking such a “researchers mentality” to the initial observations of “routine” and “place” seems like an excellent way to start our projects for the semester. I’m glad I read this chapter, because it helped provide a great starting point for my own work.

Chapter three was rather similar chapter two, in that it provided some simple instructions to help us with our projects while giving some examples of conducting research. This chapter delved more into the concept of a research “plan.” I think I’ll always remember that line from the chapter, “hang loose, but not too loose.” That seems like an excellent sort of heuristic for qualitative work.  I also appreciated the different looks into research methodology, including the three different ways they show researchers approaching observing a class. As in our earlier reading this semester, it seems quite clear that we cannot think we can somehow get away from our own personalities or beliefs when conducting this type of qualitative research. As they say in the piece about “roles and identities,” we by nature assume a complicated role when we embark on such a project. We know we bring our own personalities to the work and this will color the work in some way (for example, see Genishi’s remark about recognizing her own videography style on 57). However, if we can maintain the mindset of a researcher, we can hopefully get some really interesting work done. The more I read this book, the more excited I become about reading my fellow students' work and embarking on my own research project. I really like the way this book is organized and written. It’s easy to read and extremely helpful, because it provides excellent research tips as well as some specific examples of how these strategies have worked for the writers in the past.

On Ze Case

I'm finding myself much more intrigued and interested in this text. Though I understand the need for the first "black and white" text, this one is much more practical and is better for preparation for actual case studies.

Chapter 2 covers "casing the joint", or basically how you should prepare yourself to begin a case study. It goes over timing and spacial concerns, making physical maps of your location, scheduling, etc. Any factors you could consider about your research is covered. It helps to set a sort of order to a potentially chaotic case study. As for the third chapter, some theories and practices are covered to help us to start designing our study. In a way, the second chapter goes over the organization of a study and the third covers the loose design process.

The interesting thing about all the stories available in the text is how versatile the meaning can be, or how in-depth these observations are. Virtually everyone could come up with a different perspective from their observations; another point that parallels this is how roles are negotiated. If someone is framed as an authority figure, children are likely to act differently, so observation results could be skewed. What I found most interesting, like the "negotiating roles" sections, is the thought of things that are seemingly minuscule meaning so much. for instance, I would have never considered that the clothes we wear could potentially affect our research. I even was stricken by the point to try not asking children their names, so you become more of a facet in the classroom as opposed to an "active" role.

From doing a small research project in undergrad in a Pre-K classroom, I can understand how maintaining a "balance between distance and intimacy" could be difficult. When you're around small children that are very intrigued by having a new player in the classroom that want to continually ask questions, it can be difficult to observe them as equally as they observe you. This raises another issue as to whether you could ever really present research that ins't affected by something, whether it's the children being put off by your presence or happening to observe the most outspoken child. I guess we just need to ensure we're presenting research that is as controlled as possible, from the clothes we wear, the location of the school, or even what time of day it is.

I'm enjoying this text very much, integrating more narrative is really starting to help me envision myself performing an actual study.

research on the future researcher

In “On the Case,” the second and third chapter give some advice on how to scope out the area to find what a researcher is looking for as well as an approach to coming up with a study within a certain scope. It’s all excellent advice for a person beginning their work as a researcher. However, the book portrays the people as only subjects of a study and nothing more. This is never the case. In order to become better researchers in the field, a person needs to fully be aware of the impact his or her presence has over the study.

On the back cover of the book, the summary states that it is a book for a “novice researcher” and should be an “essential manual.” The novice researcher goes into the field wanting to learn everything about their subject: how the person interacts with the environment, on his or her own, at home, at school, anywhere. Of course, the novice researcher will be a keen observer, or at least attempt to be since the lack of inexperience, of all the sounds muttered and gestures performed from this person. This does not imply that the researcher knows what type of effects he/she is having on the person’s routine expressions and gestures. There needs to be a sense of this in order to be able to be able to report honest performance by the interaction and not just a performance because there’s an audience.

In order to gain a better understanding of the effects that a researcher has on a person’s everyday life, the researcher should be the subject of a study as well before beginning his or her own ventures in the field of research. For a class, such as this one, a great assignment would consist of having other people study our behavior at school, at home, or at work- wherever it is that we intend on intruding on other peoples’ lives.

There are plenty of benefits from this. A person will be aware of her own differences in behavior around the researcher because he or she knows that there’s documentation of some sort going on. A person will also gain a sense of what emotions are felt by being so bluntly observed by another stranger who might be of a difference sex, race, or background. If the researcher has completely different practices, the student-researcher will also take note of what influence the researcher has on his or her own practices since they are different.

This would be an interesting assignment to have; although, I’m already upset about having my privacy invaded and performance recorded by this fictional researcher. Nevertheless, it would help me understand what could possibly go on in the other person’s mind by having a complete stranger observe their every move.

Casing the Casey Case

I am really enjoying Dyson and Genishi. Out of the two methods books from this course and the two methods books from Narrative Inquiry, this is by far the best written and the most practical, in my opinion.

These two chapters cover the early steps in Case Studies. Chapter 2, Casing the Joint is about all the legwork you should do before actually engaging the case, whereas Chapter 3 is about your methods as you begin the case study. The first thing I realized is that my previous conceptions of what a case study was were completely wrong. From undergraduate school I had the idea that case studies were a primarily forensic activity, going through documents and interviewing people surrounding a person or an event in the past-tense. If you had described any of the examples given in this book to me without using the words case study I would not have labeled them such, instead I would have just called them in-depth observations or something similar.

In Casing the Joint, the authors mention how everything can have significance to your study, and they bring up the physical location of classrooms and bathrooms in the building. This is funny, because one of my current primary focuses is gifted education, and when I was in a pull-out program for GT class in elementary school our classroom was a trailer behind the school, beside another trailer used for special education classes.

That chapter goes on to specify four common categories of cases to study – Maps, Schedules, People, and Languages/sociolinguistics.

Both of these chapters brought up several important considerations I will try to keep in mind in my research. The first, and one I wouldn't have thought about: the problem with recurring observation times. Another was to consider even small details about how you present yourself as researcher. Big picture stuff I would have considered, like the role in the classroom they dissected pretty well, but things like dress and language you use and where you sit I might not have given much consideration beyond what was convenient and obvious. In fact, the whole section on being conscious of the researcher/”I” was very useful and more extensively laid out than some of our other texts. A final consideration is casing the joint in order to choose people to focus on in the study. I think I would have made assumptions on who I would observe before really entrenching myself in an environment, probably based primarily on trying to get a representation of the general population, but it makes sense that you want to carefully select people in order to address what you're researching. The book uses the example of choosing students who interact a lot with other students but also change their behavior between different groups.

Lastly, a few small sections I wanted to highlight.

On page 52, the researcher mentions the hosting teacher showing them around the neighborhood. I found this amusing because I could not picture this happening at all in the mid-size town I grew up in.

On page 27, the book uses the quote “a classroom may be thought of as a series of social events” which ties to the idea of “cultural events from the first chapter, an idea and thought pattern I really like, since it reminds us as researchers that we are looking at environments as an idea, as a process, not as a static place.

On page 56 they use the phrase “like curly hair on a damp day” to discuss factors that can't be easily controlled. I couldn't decide if this made me like the authors less or more, but it's part of a pattern of most of the material we've been reading in all of my classes make a demonstrative effort, to be more informal. Sometimes it's hilarious and awkward and doesn't really seem to fit. This is one of those times.

Romantics and Spies

Chapters two and three of Dyson and Genishi's "On the Case" contained the kind of informal retelling of the qualitative research process that fills most of my nights these days. It is also like the fifth entry into a genre that I had surmised singular when first encountered Villanueva's seminal text "Bootstraps". This I should like to burden with the unwieldy and vaguely insulting title of "Personal Narratives about Personal Narrative." Dr.Villanueva did a bang up job of elucidating the paradox of his existence while virtually proving that personal narrative can at times be the best and only tool for examining our roles in an institution. Somebody please run out and tell every composition scholar on the planet that I can read THAT book once and what made it great was the human passion and completeness of a real story. In scattering the narrative across multiple "storyings" the weight is lost and the personal lapses back into the sum of its parts. Granted this is ultimately intended as a textbook, but the standard Dr. V set is to be fascinating and engaging while writing about making research more fascinating and engaging. Tough stuff, and I appreciate his accomplishment all the more as my schooling proceeds.
    OTC is not a bad textbook at all, good organization and good advice are all throughout the work and there were parts that reduced my worry or made me feel better prepared for the coming challenges of research. It read like an afternoon in a well meaning teachers office. A teacher who knows that talking calmly and confidently about the research process was more important to me than making every point stick, as if I came in in a panic and needed to hear reasoned anecdotes to fix all the new information rattling around in my tweaked out brain.
    There were two fine justifications for the "casing of the joint". One we have encountered before but was handled well here and the other was new, obvious, and really nice to see in print. The first, which was more prominent in the latter half of the chapter was the needs and benefits of flexible research questions and goals. Other texts have stressed the inevitability of this idea, giving examples of this flexibility leading in its flow to easier or more fruitful lines of inquiry. OTC took that a little farther, fleshing out how the initial construction of a wide and open lens can bring us to the point in our research where new and divergent questions come with clarity and purpose. One must position one's self to reap the benefits of this open form of inquiry, the book seems to be saying. An argument seemed to be made that we researchers have a moral responsibility to this openness of topic and question, which appeals to me.
    The more obvious concept I was so glad to see given play here was the preparatory aspects of casing the joint(somebody call Spike Lee and let him know his pet colloquialism is out loose again). What pleased me was the very compassionate advice about not only setting one's self up for academic success but not being overwhelmed by newness and unfamiliarity. There were tensions galore in this research scenario and to add any franticness to the mix would be destructive. An intelligent link was drawn between being prepared enough to stay calm and relaxed and not overplaying the role of involved researcher. It was made clear that the case itself will seek to draw the researcher's character too far into the personal side of the equation. Having started with a strong and complete view of the case in its fullness will help to keep the precise balance of "loose but not too loose" and not accidentally morph into Romantics and spies.

For this blog, I am going to provide a summary of chapters two and three. In chapter two of On the Case,  Dyson and Genishi discuss how to set up or “case out the joint” as the authors like to describe it. They are trying to inform the readers that “the information that researchers initially gather and, further, the conceptual tools…” (20) are what researchers can use to create the information that shapes their study. They go on to further explain how information can be found from things such as the location; time; aesthetics; and social interaction.

To further elaborate on how Dyson and Genishi use location as a median for gathering data, they separate locations. A researcher could collect data from where the location of the potential study is. The researcher could also collect data from the location’s interior dimensions. Both of these scenarios can provide information that lead to insights in which give qualitative descriptions about the participant’s quality of life.

Time is another tool that can be used to gain information. Chapter two describes that people can be dictated by time. They can either be manipulated by environmental structures, such as building limitations, or people can be limited by time such as scheduling conflicts. I found this to be interesting because when you are thinking about organizing how to develop a strategy for research, time is an important factor, but you do not necessarily think about how your natural settings can affect your time limits.

A researcher can also use aesthetics as a form of data. They can use the different styles of materials on the walls of the proposed study environment. The different type of materials can lead to the researcher catching a glimpse of a larger picture of the participant’s daily social structure and community. Aesthetics can often relate to social interactions. Events where participants engage with each other can divulge information that can lead the researcher setting up different types of studies. The researchers can get a sense of the type of community in which the potential study is surrounded by.

In chapter three of On the Case, the authors brings together the two different case studies and further explores how the different techniques of gathering data can be carried out with different environments. In this chapter the most helpful thing was that the authors compared and contrasted the two scenarios side by side. One thing that I want to mention is about how chapters two and three of On the Case closely tie together. I find it extremely helpful when an author builds on previous examples from their texts. This allows me, as the reader, to better understand and compare the information that the author is trying to convey. There is another important piece of information that I find important. The authors make sure to distinguish between studies and the purpose for their collection of data so that the focus is maintained. I like to call this maintain the frame. By “casing out the joint” and using all avenues of data collection to frame the study, the frame or focus of the proposed study will be easier to maintain.

Creswell, Dyson, and Genishi

Creswell, Dyson, and Genishi

In John Creswell’s final chapter, he discusses in detail the use of a Mixed Methods research design.  He lines out not only the details and benefits of this method, but he also discusses some of the limitations this mixed design creates.  Continuing the structure of the previous chapters, Creswell examines this method from beginning to end.  He begins by explaining the convergence of Mixed Methods research in the academic world; he also explains that because this method is relatively new in the different fields of research, one should pay attention to different reasons he or she is implementing it: “Because mixed methods is relatively new in the social and human sciences as a distinct research approach, it is useful to convey a basic definition and description of the approach in the proposal” (204).  By explaining the reasoning behind the mixed method in a research study, one would be able to legitimize his or her methods of research (a checklist is provided on 205). 

Creswell continues the chapter by explaining the planning, designing, and implementing aspects of mixed methods research.  He different parts of sequential and concurrent designs and details the different types that are used in research (Sequential Transformative Strategy, Concurrent Triangulation Strategy, etc.).  At the end of the chapter, Creswell not only explains the data collection and presentation aspects of this type of research, but he also provides multiple examples of mixed methods research:  “The actual data was collected from 182 students and parent participants from surveys over a 4-year period of time and from 56 students and their parents in interviews” (222).  This example was explaining a concurrent strategy of inquiry, which was presented by Hossler and Vesper in 1993; this presentation of mixed methods research and others were provided to show data analysis and validation as well as to further represent the different styles of mixed methods research.

In Anne Haas Dyson and Celia Genishi’s first chapter of On the Case: Approaches to Language and Literacy Research, they juxtapose the lives of different children (both are pre pubescent girls in different types of communities with different social practices).  The first girl, who is used predominantly in the chapter, is named Madlenka; she is a fictional character from a book by Peter Sis.  Dyson and Genishi explain the tooth-loosing anecdote of this little girl.  They show her excitement about loosing a tooth and illustrate her different social confrontations that develop.  The other explanation comes from the researchers observations of different elementary classrooms.  The authors utilize this classroom environment to explain the different meanings behind different social interactions: “In contrast (to Madlenka’s community interactions), in some neighborhoods and classrooms, children share one language that is not English, for example, Chinese or Spanish.  In their classrooms there is the audible complexity multiple languages, with a teacher often speaking English” (15).

Both of these assigned chapters remind me of my previous position with Methodist Healthcare Ministries (MHM).  I was a Program Support Specialist for the Wesley Nurses (a group of nurses who perform health advocacy in varying communities).  During my time working for MHM, I saw the implementation of the mixed methods research design.  Because the 80 nurses work in 80 different communities around Texas, the administrative staff, when developing protocols for education and logistics, has to keep all 80 communities in mind – this was done by not only examining statistics of the different regions, but also by interviewing the individual patients and the nurses who treated them.  Although Creswell provides us with many different facets of mixed methods, I definitely believe that the research done by MHM was concurrent in its design; in other words, both qualitative and quantitative methods were dependent on each other.  This has also helped in planning for my own research.  Although Creswell does lay out the flaws of this new research design, I can see the potential of its effectiveness on a multitude of different audiences.